


Thousand eyes

by Nevospitanniy



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gore, M/M, Poison, Undefined stage of relationship, copious amounts of blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-27 06:24:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21387583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevospitanniy/pseuds/Nevospitanniy
Summary: “Leave me.” Derek’s face is lined with drying blood and his eyes flicker between colors like faulty Christmas lights.“Fuck you,” Stiles spits out, “you’re such a bitch.” He haltingly takes a knife out of the waistband of his long-suffering jeans and stands, hunched, between Derek and the door.Stiles stands and waits to die.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 9
Kudos: 187





	Thousand eyes

His breathing is wet and wheezing, almost like Scott’s used to be, before. Stiles makes his feet move, inertia more than willpower, as the muscles in his thighs seize and throb with offended effort. He is sweating. He is scared.

“Faster,” Derek says, and it’s so close Stiles swears he can feel lips on his temple.

Talking is a waste of air and, for once, Stiles doesn’t have any to waste. Derek lopes off to his left, smashing a clawed hand into the tree branch in their way, ripping it down. Stiles hears the clatter of metal on metal, the whiny roar of ATVs: coming quiet is less important to them than leaving victorious.

The entirety of Derek’s side is a half-healed mess of flesh, moist and shiny, weeping more blood into already soaked shirt when trying to close around the wire and failing. His face is determined and angry. Stiles’ arm is more numb that he would have liked, fingers not bending in the right ways. He lost his phone a mile ago.

The hunters may just win this time.

“Faster,” Derek repeats with a growl, words muffled as his canines extend. Stiles shivers and it has nothing to do with his night-cold dew-wet clothes.

The enemy will eviscerate them both, so Stiles runs faster, faster until he tastes blood in the back of his throat.

*

“What do you mean, I’m not coming?” Stiles’ face is scrunched up, bitter and petulant, and Derek doesn’t have time for this.

“I don’t have time for this.”

Scott groans and Allison slaps her hand on her forehead.

“We’ve talked about this,” Erica drawls from the couch, leg dangling over the armrest, “you can’t stop him.”

Stiles thinks she’s talking to him and wants to note they had no such conversation, but Derek’s head whips toward her with a scowl. Erica is either immune or indifferent, because she just blinks at him without an ounce of fear.

“You can’t make him obey. He is _not a wolf_,” she says and grins, like it’s the world’s funniest joke. The frown in Derek’s face morphs into something more tired than angry, and Stiles is missing a huge part of this conversation.

“And for this exact reason, I can’t be responsible for his death,” Derek quietly replies, “but I will be. So my answer is still no.”

Stiles looks as if he’s about to split at the seams with hot air like a balloon.

“Then I will stop asking.”

Derek grabs his jacket from the back of the chair and puts it on, car keys jangling in the pocket.

“Good. It means you don’t need my answer after all.” He waves his hand in the direction of the door and Erica slides off the couch and saunters toward the exit, giving Stiles an unreadable look. Boyd and Isaac follow her, with Scott and Allison right behind them. Scott at least has the decency to look back at him with _sorry_ written on his face so vividly it might as well be in Sharpie on his forehead.

Stiles waits for something to happen, for Derek to call out to him personally, to apologize, to cordially invite him to go on their illicit and exciting adventures, but he doesn’t. After the door shuts, Derek stands in the hallway for a few more seconds with his hands in his pockets, shrugging his shoulders like the jacket doesn’t quite fit right, even though it looks tailor-made for him.

“You can’t go with us,” Derek repeats, slowly, like it’s a question of comprehension rather than content. “You are staying here.”

“Fuck you,” Stiles says, just as slowly, enunciating every letter, and Derek sighs.

He leaves, closing the door with surprising gentleness, and Stiles sits on the couch that is still warm with Erica’s body heat. The cars outside rumble with life and noisily drive away, dissipating into the droning of the forest.

*

They hurtle though the door at the same time, leaving a red smear on the rotting wood with a revolting wet slap. Stiles almost falls, but catches himself on the handle and slams the door shut, sweaty back plastered to it as he watches Derek writhe on the floor. His claws slowly retract and, by the sickly pallor of his face, Stiles knows it’s very bad.

The hunters are close, so fucking close, and they have no idea if this building is secure, if they will be noticed, if they will survive.

His throat is so raw he can’t even swallow spit.

“Derek, please, I need you to move, we need to hide,” Stiles scrambles to Derek’s side, hand hovering over the ruddy spot on his once-white wife beater. The wire is sharp and thick, going around Derek like a sick belt, coils of it disappearing inside his flesh, wet, dripping, grown over with tender pink skin that splits every time he moves. He must be in so much pain.

Derek looks like a reanimated corpse, all fight gone out of him the second he ended up on the floor, stirring with a heavy twisted jolt to stand up and failing.

“Please,” Stiles rasps, and his eyes burn with tears he’s not sure his body can spare. He is so scared and so tired and his arm hurts. They need to hide.

He doesn’t even know where they are. Some abandoned hunter (ha!) shack or an old forest service outpost, all the windows are broken and covered with cardboard and there are more leaves inside than outside. Derek murmurs something into the dusty floorboards. His nose started bleeding, fat drops slowly making their way under Derek’s cheek.

“What, what are you saying, I can’t—” There is a roar in Stiles’ ears and he thinks he hears voices.

“Leave me.” Derek’s face is lined with drying blood and his eyes flicker between colors like faulty Christmas lights.

“Fuck you,” Stiles spits out, “you’re such a bitch.” He haltingly takes a knife out of the waistband of his long-suffering jeans and stands, hunched, between Derek and the door.

Stiles stands and waits to die.

*

Finding them is incredibly easy. Even if Stiles hadn’t installed LoJack in Allison’s car, they are anything but secretive, you can practically trail Erica alone by all the gum wrappers and chewed-up Ring Pops she leaves behind. Stiles knows Derek is fuming about this at all hours of the day, but that’s the problem with the pack being 100% comprised of damaged teenagers he picked off the street, power-drunk and stupid. If only Stiles was there to advise him.

Camaro is, of course, parked picture perfect, while Allison’s car looks more or less abandoned - a dead giveaway that Scott was driving.

Stiles idles behind them for a minute, leg twitching nervously, thinking that maybe Derek was right, maybe Stiles seeks out danger to feel like he belongs, not because he’s actually all that helpful. Other cars whizz by him on the road and he, in a true Sheriff son fashion, estimates whether their speed is already a felony or not yet. He imagines red numbers pop in his head, like on the display of a radar gun, because he’s wasting time.

His dad is just starting dinner, probably looking sheepishly at Stiles’ empty parking space and pretending he’s not worried. He will settle heavily into his chair, beer in one hand and a plate in the other, taking care not to spill anything onto his work shirt he didn’t feel like taking off. He will watch MASH 4077 reruns and eat a microwaved meal, something with broccoli in it. He will nervously check his wristwatch and then look at the clock on the wall, just in case. He will go put the plastic dishes in the trash instead of recycling and take a second beer to his office for some extra work because Stiles isn’t there and can’t make him go to bed.

Stiles rubs his face till it goes red. Nothing actually matters, so he angrily throws the car in park, jumps out and, slamming the door shut, ambles into the forest.

*

His death appears to be running late. Stiles hiccups quietly, hands shaking so badly he almost drops the knife, not understanding how did the hunters miss them in the only building within their possible walking distance. This must be a ploy to get them to leave the house, it has to be. It’s the world’s shittiest siege of the world’s shittiest Constantinople.

Stiles hears Derek shuffle behind him, and bites his lips into a thin red line because he can’t look at him right now.

“Stiles,” he gurgles. It is such a horrible sound Stiles just shakes his head, hoping that Derek can see it. A hand grabs his ankle and tugs.

“Nope, not talking to you, lie there and heal,” Stiles wrenches his leg out of the weak grasp and sniffles. He wants, he _needs_ the hunters to waltz through the door, so he can die doing something and doesn’t have to see Derek expire in this middle of nowhere, while he stands there like a fucking moron.

“I need your help,” Derek mumbles, and that is truly his kryptonite. Stiles looks at the door, giving it one more chance to bust open with enemies, but it doesn’t, so he relents and kneels by Derek on the dirty floor.

“You’re not gonna like this,” staring at the moldy ceiling, Derek squeezes out, arms and legs spasming intermittently.

“That’s too bad, I was thoroughly enjoying myself up to this point.” The noise in his left ear gets worse and Stiles considers that eardrum pretty much a lost cause.

“I need you to find the end of the wire and, and unroll me. We don’t have wire cutters, your knife won’t do it and we are short on time,” he says with such ridiculous gravitas it’s almost funny. He bled out a literal bucketful of blood and it’s spreading out over the damp leaves and dead flies, breaking into thick strips where it drips down between the warped floorboards.

“You’re right, I hate this plan,” Stiles says, throwing a quick glance over the shoulder at the ever still door. With the help of his knife, he takes off the rest of Derek’s shirt, with Derek himself thoughtfully watching his every move. “Just letting you know.”

Healing werewolf flesh is the most unusual substance, it’s like thick jello, spreading over wounds, glossy and plastic, but throbbing so strongly Stiles feels it with his fingers. Derek must feel like he’s inside of a giant clock. The dark fetid tendrils of wolfsbane snake around his waist and feather up.

“Stick it in, Stiles.”

“I can’t make fun of this right now, so I’ll save it for later,” he says and, after a bracing exhale, slides his hand inside Derek’s stomach, where the gash is the widest. Puking is absolutely not an option, but he wishes it was, because it is an unflinchingly disgusting procedure. Derek’s entire abdominal cavity is filled with, for the lack of a better explanation, chunky goop, pulsing and quivering, with a wire running through it. He is trying not to look, both because it is deeply upsetting and because it’s dark anyway, so he has to rely on his sense of touch alone. His brain is listening for everything going on inside and outside, nerves stretched so thin they might just snap.

“Be careful,” Derek says with great effort. Tears are running down his temples, but his face is otherwise surprisingly composed. Stiles is nowhere this calm.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m trying, but I don’t even know what the end feel like,” he’s hyperventilating, probably crying right into Derek’s wound and that must sting, but nowhere as much as an entire palm in his guts.

“No, you’re cutting yourself on the wire, be careful,” Derek retorts, gulping. “I can feel your blood inside.”

This sucks so badly, this blind splashing inside Derek while he is dying with every second Stiles wastes. The whole length of the wire is sharp as hell, so the end of it feels exactly like every other part, and there has got to be a better way, but he can’t even start to consider other options. Blood on his forearms is rapidly drying, tugging on the arm hair and generally making him wish for a shower and a grave in any order. He has to use his second, ironically useless, hand, and Derek’s face pinches at the addition.

Stiles knows he’s talking, just saying _sorrysorrysorrysorry_ all the time, because whatever he’s asking forgiveness for becomes meaningless the next second and thusly requires a new apology. He can taste the blood in the air. He stopped checking the door.

Finally, he finds the criss-cross of two ends somewhere around where Derek’s liver used to be and tugs them apart. The blades go into the flesh of his hand like butter, it hurts so much that Stiles whimpers, but it must be a paper cut compared to Derek’s _missing stomach_, so he stomps down the pain with guilt.

“Good boy, now roll me onto my side,” Derek breathes, pale as they come, and Stiles obeys. The wire cuts anew parts that have been tentatively healed, Derek’s body unaware it has done itself dirty. Stiles feels so cruel, ripping the new parts of Derek that were so hard-won.

Derek plops onto his stomach, with Stiles holding aloft the end of the wire, wrapped around his seeping swollen palm. Stiles can’t help but think about Aliens and chest busters, because it sort of makes this easier. Movie blood is fake, Sigourney Weaver and the other actors survived the filming, the cat was fine.

“Do you think I should do one side at the time or both?” Stiles asks, as if they are picking Coke or Dr. Pepper in the restaurant and he’s not ass deep in blood, carving Derek like a turkey on Thanksgiving.

“Both,” comes a dull reply, “faster,”

“Painful,” says Stiles, carefully tugging the wire through the skin of Derek’s back, blades popping out bright red and shiny. It reminds him of opening a can of tuna, somehow.

“Faster,” Derek repeats, signifying the end of that discussion. Stiles rubs his nose of his shoulder, and still ends up covering it with blood.

“I’m rolling you around on the floor like a taquito, can you sit up maybe?” They’ve reached their other side again and Stiles assumes he still has about three or four full layers of wire to go. “I think you’re bleeding faster laying down.”

Derek nods and Stiles sheepishly helps him up, wincing when Derek spits out blood and something else. Bending at the waist is a struggle for him, so Stiles abandons the hope to do this with as much care as this operation deserves and goes for the bandaid method.

“Prepare yourself,” he mutters, tugging at the wire and freeing the entire side at once. Derek’s nose starts bleeding again and he coughs more blood. His brand new abdominal muscles rip open like a candy wrapper, spraying out onto an already filthy floor.

Without giving himself a moment to contemplate what he’s doing, Stiles dashes behind Derek, whose entire lower body is covered in red down to his feet, ripping a length of wire free, this time slicing open his back, and he can see Derek’s spine, chalky white between all the mincemeat. He feels frantic, nauseous, dirty.

“I’ll saw you in half, this is what they wanted, now I know why they left us alone, they want me to kill you,” Stiles says, hoarse with terror, running around Derek and tearing another ten inches from his stomach.

Derek can’t keep his eyes open, but smiles with red teeth.

“You can try,” he whispers and jerks his head _go ahead_. Stiles sobs, loudly and shamelessly, and tugs.

*

One issue with being late is that you get have all the consequences without any of the fun. What he also gets is a fist in the face.

“Why didn’t you stay home?” Derek hisses, hanging limp in his handcuffs, wincing as a hunter is walking around him, driving the wolfsbane wire deeper into his skin.

Stiles’s head is still ringing from the hit, so he just giggles stupidly and spits some blood onto his attacker’s face, who wipes it with a disgusted yelp and slaps Stiles. Scott et al are nowhere to be seen, which could be both a very good thing and a very bad thing, he’s figuratively dying to ask Derek what did he miss, but it just wasn’t the right moment.

“Oh, you all live together? How cute, I just love when the packs do that, makes it real easy to exterminate,” the hunter grins at Derek, who is looking absolutely murderous. Stiles is working his jaw, slightly dazed from two consecutive blows.

“This party sucks, boys, I have a recommendation for a night out, called The Blue Oyster—”

Another slap and a punch in the stomach make him fall onto the concrete floor, wheezing.

“I guess you don’t love Police Academy, ACAB.”

He hears Derek growl and flail in his chains, with a responding dull slap of flesh hitting flesh.

“That’s okay, I sometimes can’t stand law enforcement either—”

A steel-toed boot lands onto his palm with a crunch and Stiles howls in pain.

“What the fuck!” He cradles his injured hand in a healthy one, face throbbing. His fingers are purpling fast and aren’t bent quite right. The hunter spits on the floor and points at Stiles.

“Shut. Your. Trap.”

“Or what? You’ll break my other hand?” Stiles drawls, hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. Pain fizzles out a bit, leaving just bone-deep tiredness and a hum of hurt.

“Don’t give me ideas, bitch,” the hunter retorts. “Listen, why in the hell are you even here? You’re a kid, you’re not a wolf, the fuck are you doing?”

“He owes me money, now I have to follow him everywhere to make sure he doesn’t skip town,” Stiles says jovially and earns a nice kick in the ribs.

“Stiles, stop,” Derek yells at him and earns a slap himself. The first hunter has run out of wire, wrapping it around Derek’s midriff like some sort of lifesaver, and is now playing with a cattle prod in their field of vision, zapping it from time to time.

“God, what a stupid name,” the second hunter shakes his head and with another kick in Stiles’ kidneys for good measure, turns his attention to Derek.

“Oh, I’ll be peeing blood for the rest of my life now, thank you, much obliged,” huffing, Stiles says from the floor, a dazzling _distract distract distract_ filling his brain like an alarm.

The second hunter rubs his temples.

“If you don’t stop talking, the rest of life part will come right now. ff you think I have any qualms _at all_ about killing you because you’re not a wolf, think again.” He stares at Stiles with a surprisingly tired expression, which takes him aback. He doesn’t know if this is an opening, per say, but by god he will use it.

“I’m the brain for the entire pack, he—” his floppy warped hand jerks in Derek’s general direction “—is a nobody, a minion. Doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground, a real dim individual.”

He catches Derek’s face briefly and he looks so stunned Stiles even feels bad for a second. The first hunter snorts and sticks the cattle prod into Derek’s wound, making him twitch and grunt.

The second hunter shrugs.

“Well, I’m very happy for you, but I don’t give a shit. Your pack is a joke. Stop talking or I will cut your tongue out and feed it to him,” he points to Derek, who doesn’t even have the energy to keep on his feet anymore, instead dangling from his chains like an ornament.

“He wouldn’t go for it, very picky, he only eats chicken nuggets and pie,” Stiles grins, saliva more blood than anything else. He doesn’t know if it is the adrenaline or his brain swelling, but he feels reckless and dangerous and really funny. Everything that is happening is just _hilarious_.

With a huff, the second hunter pulls a Glock from the waistband of his jeans and cocks it.

“That’s it, you’re done, goodbye,” he points the gun at the still-smiling Stiles, but never gets the chance to unload it into his target, because the first hunter is thrown bodily into his side. The shot rings ear-splittingly loud in a tiny room and Stiles coughs from surprise. Derek stops swinging on his chains, legs catching himself on the ground; his wrist cracks and he yanks his hand out of the manacles, drowsily unclamping the second one.

Hunters scramble in a pile, with Stiles diving for the gun, still hot to the touch. He barely has the time to grab it, when the second hunter crawls from under his partner, knocked out cold with Derek’s bootprint on his broken face. Stiles quickly checks the gun for ammo and shoot the second hunter in the shoulder, and, after he screeches from pain, the knee. He tries for one in the chest as well, but the gun clicks empty and Stiles throws it at the hunter’s head in frustration. He misses, but it still feels good.

Derek twists his wrist back into place with a nasty crack and he shuffles to the door.

“Stiles, go,” he spits, angry and hurt, but Stiles somehow feels he’s not angry _with him_ and that’s what important.

He kicks the moaning hunter in the stomach before they leave just because he can.

“If you ever do that again, I will murder you, Stiles,” Derek grabs his shirt collar and all but throws him ahead of himself into the hallway, in the direction of the door.

“What a fucking ingrate.”

*

The last of the wire slides out with a wet slurp and Stiles wants to vomit. Before, his nausea was manageable, but now, as the relief floods him and he sees Derek’s eyes flutter shut and his mouth go slack, he can feel the acid in his throat.

His own hand he was wrapping the wire around looks terrible; he must have missed his treatment window and it’s going to be infected for sure and contemplates as to why in the fuck did he use his good hand for this task or better yet, didn’t just let the wire fall down.

“Thank you,” Derek rasps and spits out another mouthful of blood, saliva, bile and god knows what else. His body, strung up and tired, seems to be hesitant to heal, which is understandable, considering what it had just gone through, lazily seeping blood from Derek’s new waistline, but not flooding the room with his intestines anymore. The floor is sticky, dirty and smells like death, which doesn’t calm Stiles at all.

Stiles doesn’t trust himself to open his mouth and not puke, so he just nods tensely and picks up his abandoned knife. He’s been sloshing around in Derek’s guts for good 20 minutes, but there is still no noise from the outside and Stiles is too scared to check. Both of his hands are equally useless now, for different reasons, so he switches the knife to his smashed hand, because the harsh surface of the handle was too much on all the cuts.

“Where is Scott?” This question is about an hour late, but he is still curious.

Derek snorts.

“Unlike you, Scott listens to instructions, so when I figured out we were going into a trap, I told the pack to get safe and find me later. Don’t know how successful they were, but so far so good, I think.”

He manages to sit up fully, midriff slowly, ever so slowly stitching itself together, back against an old musty couch frame, legs in now dark red jeans splayed out. Still paler than death, Derek nonetheless seems more aware and awake, which has to be a great sign.

“I refuse to believe Scott didn’t argue with you,” Stiles murmurs, suddenly too tired to talk any louder. He’s swaying on his feet lightly, dizzy and unfocused.

“He did, a little bit. Stiles, sit down or you’ll fall.” Derek beckons him closer with the wave of his hand.

“Shut up or I will put the wire back in,” grumbling, Stiles gets on all fours and humiliatingly crawls to Derek, because his legs for some reason decided not to work at all. Derek watches him with amusement that all the dried rusty blood can’t hide. He pats the disgusting floor between his thighs.

“Sit.”

Continuing his angry mumbling, Stiles settles in the V of Derek’s legs, facing the door and with his little combat knife at the ready, half-pointed at the door.

“Do you feel safer like that?” Derek laughs in his ear and Stiles’ whole body breaks out in goosebumps.

“Yeah,” he breathes out, his back getting cold and wet from the blood on Derek’s stomach. It should be pretty gross, but Stiles can’t find it in himself to care.

He jerks when Derek takes his cut hand in his, looking over it.

“It’s going to be fine,” Stiles says, not taking his eyes off the door. It’s pitch dark already, which makes it more ominous that no sound is reaching them inside.

“Sure,” Derek replies and licks the biggest gash. Stiles drops his knife.

“Oh my god, what the fuck, Derek,” Stiles turns to look at Derek, however much he can see without any light source at all, other hand frantically looking for the knife again.

“It heals faster,” he says, matter of factly, “dogs lick their own wounds and all that. I’m sure you know.”

Stiles can yank his hand out without any trouble, but Derek’s tongue is warm and gentle on his offended hand, which is stinging and undoubtedly covered in Derek’s own blood just as much as his.

“It’s dirty,” is what he ends up saying.

“I don’t mind.”

They sit for a couple minutes in complete darkness, accompanied only by Stiles’ stifled breathing and the wet smacking of Derek’s tongue.

“I’m not licking any of yours,” Stiles remarks.

There is a pause, like Derek is thinking.

“I wouldn’t want you to.”

“And I still owe you a roasting for that ‘put it in’ line.”

“Okay,” Derek breathes on his hand and it tickles.

“Don’t tell Scott you licked me.”

“Oh, he’ll know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lil gold star for everyone who catches the Frankenstein reference


End file.
